Let’s show some editorial standards before this place loses its reputation and its readers.

No. What should be loosened up are regulations – local, state, and Federal – to allow for private companies to deliver electricity to those who wish to purchase it. Today, we have a patchwork quilt that all have the same basic purpose: to keep electricity generation, distribution, and delivery monopolized by quasi-government agencies in every locale.

Free the electricity producers and you’ll have better quality, lower rates – just as is the case in every other business. Heaven help us if the idea of having food grown and delivered is every subject to the same Fascist-lite principle of combining government and business. Having no lights at night will then be the least of our problems.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34233

http://epw.senate.gov/public\/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=f7bd7b77-ba50-48c2-a635-220d7cf8c519

“The United States has largest energy reserves on Earth, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.

As shown in the charts below (follow link above), the U.S. has 1,321 billion barrels of oil (or barrels of oil equivalent for other sources of energy) when combining its recoverable natural gas, oil and coal reserves.

While Russia is a close second with 1,248 billion barrels, other energy producing nations are far behind. No. 3 is Saudi Arabia (543 billion barrels), followed by China (494 billion barrels), Iran (426 billion barrels) and Canada (221 billion barrels.)

“Our overwhelming coal, natural gas, and oil resources represent tens of trillions of dollars in wealth and millions of American jobs,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R.-Ok.), who, along with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R.-Alaska), released the report last week. “Whether through decree or purposeful inaction, government policies that unnecessarily restrict or prevent our ability to responsibly produce these domestic resources are threatening, and could eventually undermine, our nation’s economic and national security. We should pursue an all-of-the-above strategy that advances new energy technologies but also prioritizes developing the resources we have today.”

The report also noted that the United States has 28% of all the world’s coal reserves, with Russia again coming in second with 19%.

In addition, the report stated that the United States has tapped into only 13% or 21 billion barrels of its oil reserves, with the other 87% still untouched.”

Allegheny Power… wanted some of its 700,000 Western Pennsylvania customers to start using smart meters quickly because the company’s state-mandated energy conservation program relies on use of such devices.

–snip–

According to the company, all customers beginning in February would pay a monthly surcharge of $5.86, which would increase to $14.34 a month by June 2011, $15.57 a month by June 2012 and $15.77 each month by June 2013.
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Nobody making under $250,000 will pay a dime more in taxes… well…not directly to the gov’t…we’ll make somebody else charge you and collect money.

Yeah.. obama in control of who gets electrical power is what I want… not.

If the State were doing what it wants you
to think it is doing, it would _still_
be a bad idea; Power generation, and all
the other utilities and infrastructure
vital to human survival, need to be
DE-centralized, made modular, and,
on the software side at least, made
triple-redundant, using different code
for each of the three controllers in
a 2-out-of-3-vote safety circuit,
as in done in aircraft fly-by-wire
systems; Conservative old tech.

What I tell you three times is true:
The pyramid of power is the mark of
the Totalitarian State.

Free markets are another example of distributed intelligence proven to be vastly superior to centralized command systems.